MOSCOW, August 5. /TASS/. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE ODIHR) has denied itself the opportunity to monitor Russia’s parliamentary election by rejecting Moscow’s invitation, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told the Kommersant daily.
"At the end of the day, the ODIHR has denied itself the opportunity to monitor the election and draw any conclusions because the proposed quantitative limits made it possible to do that. I would like to point out that the ODIHR recruited 47 people to monitor the US elections amid the pandemic," he said.
Grushko emphasized that Russia had sent invitations to the OSCE ODIHR and other organizations in full compliance with the country’s related international obligations. "We regret that the all-or-nothing logic prevailed in the ODIHR. Such an approach to sovereign states doesn’t work, it only erodes the mechanism of international election monitoring," the senior Russian diplomat stressed.
The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the ODIHR and said in a statement on Wednesday that it "will not be able to send observers for the upcoming elections to the Duma due to limitations imposed by Russian Federation authorities on the election observation." "The ability to independently determine the number of observers necessary for us to observe effectively and credibly is essential to all international observation," the statement quoted ODIHR Director Matteo Mecacci as saying.